Lovely blue borage flowers with their odd hairy leaves to stick in your mug of Pimms. Or is that drink old hat with your lot? Boating men up at Islandbridge affected it at one time. Anyway, the herb is said to go well with white wine, too. Never tried the combination. But borage looks well in the ground and seeds itself nearly like dandelions; and, of course, it mixes well with other herbs in salads. For, winter and summer, herbs of your own are one of the blessings of life. And you need them in quantity, and some of them should always be in a sequence of sowings. Such as chervil, which, remarkably for such a tender-looking plant, will stay with you for 12 months; in favourable circumstances surviving frost and snow, in the open.
In many a garden now there's a regular outburst of night of crunching on the flagstones as another few snails are ground flat. Slugs die quietly. Use the little poison pills? No. First, danger to other species; second a big killing leaves a sheet of slime which is awful to behold. What's the remedy? In the case of herbs, keep them all in pots. Then put the pots on a rough table outside and have the legs stand in a big saucer of water each. For extra protection, cover the table with rough grit or sand.
If your herbs are in beds, you could try surrounding each clump with the plastic that's used in tree-guards. Again, surround it with grit or sand, and good luck to you.
Don't despair. It is worth a lot of trouble to be able to say, no matter what is being cooked or concocted into a salad: "Would you like a few herbs?" And a few means a good handful, preferably mixed. The only one that is pure joy on its own - or rather the best of the good ones - is chervil. For general use you could do with, in addition such as: parsley (including the flat kind), chives, lovage, hyssop, winter savory, mint, of course, lemon balm, French terragon, burnet, bergamot and a few more that you fancy or can chase up in the books.
Meanwhile, this damp weather is producing slugs and snails in legions. Even walking around the flagstones at night, you go crunch crunch. It would be great to have a hedgehog. Better still, two.